Parents meeting tonight to discuss students' future

Tonight parents from the Creekwood community will meet with school officials about their children's failing test scores.
The majority of the students from Creekwood failed their adequate yearly progress reports.
Concerned parents want to know why.
The AYP is a federal test under No Child Left Behind. It tests children's math skills on a scale of one to four, with four being the best.
As a result, the school board is allowing parents to move their children to Holly Tree Elementary.
The deadline to sign up is August 17.
Rachel Freeman School officials will meet parents at the Creekwood Learning Center to discuss options for improving the scores next year.
Concerned parent Veronica Murphy said, "I feel like they should have given us the information before hand not send out letters on Thursday and tell parents you have one week to decide if you want your child to go to a school that has failed. That's no time for a parent to decide."
The school board said the test results came out three weeks ago. They sent letters to parents last week within the timeframe that the federal law allows.
Parents have two more days to sign their kids up for holly tree.
The school board will decide which students will go based on academic need and their parents income.

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Parents do your home work before you go to this meeting. Trace the money. That school gets more Federal and State funds if the kids to poorly. it has nothing to do with neighborhood you come from. Stop using that as a issue, The issue is the teacher, princpal, school broad. handle the money. A kid can do well all year long and fail the EOG. That is a proven fact. trace the money and then you will see what the problem is. My kid went to North Topsail for 4 years failed the EOG every year. Was making average grades in class. Move on to Topsail Middle PASS EOG went up 2 grade levels in Math and 1 grade level in Reading. and I seen where it was reported in the Wilmington Star News that North Topsail got more funding because they were poor graded school. So you tell what the goal was here?

The only people failing in this case are the parents. Parents, did you not know that your child was doing bad in math? How? Or am I supposed to believe that teachers are just handing out grades? Wrong-o. Lets get this straight...I know a child who goes to rachel freeman and this child is very bright. However, realize that her parents are also very involved in her education. These parents say they were shocked when they heard the news. How many of them took time to talk with their child's teachers? And don't tell me children who do well often fail their EOG. There are some children who do, but the majority of children who are made to study and do their work pass EOGs. Having said that, I've always though no child left behind was stupid and did nothing but put a band-aid on a cut.We never had it when I went to school and I have a fine education.

The problem with no child left behind is the whole class is then forced to teach to the lowest student. The smart kids get board and then start acting out. The parents need to step up and be parents and be involved in their child's education and not make another welfare dependent.

...is that the federal government has absolutely no Constitutional authority to set educational standards for the states. As a matter of fact, it is completely prohibited by the Tenth Amendment. (That's the one Washington wishes would go away.)
When NCLB was even proposed, we should have had fifty state governors say, "Over my dead body." That didn't happen, of course, because Washington threatens to withhold the tax dollars the residents of any rebellious state have already paid in if they don't cooperate....plus, standing up to Washington requires a backbone.
Education is rightfully the realm of the state, and if Connecticut wants to have fantastic schools while Mississippi is willing to have acceptable schools, that decision is the right of those states. We must never loose sight of the fact that we are a federation of fifty, individual, supposedly-sovereign states, with a federal government that serves ONLY those functions designated by the Constitution. (The Interstate Commerce clause gives them a lot of power relative to services such as the FAA, FDA, etc., but it should not extend to education.)
The problem with NCLB is that it takes a lot of flexibility away from the states and counties in dealing with situations that don't fit the standard, white-bread, Leave-it-to-Beaver mould. The problems of the Durham Public Schools are totally different than the problems of the Bladen County Schools, but NCLB mandates the same, cookie-cutter approach.
On a tangential issue, I believe that making all schools "wonderful learning factories" with no drop-outs and nothing but success stories is as big a pipe dream as people like Edwards and Obama wanting to end poverty. Neither is ever going to happen. We are always going to have poor people and people who fail miserably at their education. The two issues are inexorably connected.
The best and the brightest aren't going to go teach in a school where they fear for their own safety, and parents who dropped out of school themselves, are in prison, or are simply "gone" are never going to give the involvement and assistance that a child needs to succeed and break out of the endless cycle.
The best hope we have (and it is working, albeit slowly) is the individual child who grows up in that situation and decides, "This is not for me. I am not going to live like this. I want something better."

I dont believe that the teachers are 'forced' to teach to the lowest student in the class. However, I do believe it takes parent involvement in the child's education in order for that child to get the proper help he/she needs. My child is one of those who needs additional help. He is not mentally retarded or anything like that. He just processes information differently than most. So the teachers and I sat down last year to figure out an IEP -Individualized Education Plan. He gets the help he needs and the school provides it. But it was a TEAM effort. The school worked with him and I worked with the school making sure he was getting exactly what he needed.
Part of the problem is parents think their job is done once the child walks through the school doors and it doesn't resume until they walk through the front door at home. In actuality the parents should still be part of their childs life even during school hours!
Parents at Freeman want to complain then maybe they should look into a mirror first! And if teachers are 'afraid' to work there then parents should be ashamed they have raised such children to incite fear in these civil servants!

Very well done guest2008, you have proven that with parental involvement children can be reached and taught. It is the parents that think of school as nothing more than free daycare while they sit on their butts waiting on the next check frustrate me to no end. They want to blame the school when little johnny can't read but they have never taken the time to read with johnny. Congratulations on helping your son achieve and succeed in life.